The new character creation tools in Eve Online are outstanding. If you put a little bit of effort into them you can come up with an amazing looking character, but the high quality that comes in your new character means that you can make your character look a little cheesy when you don't intend to. This guide will give you a few pointers to help you create the character you want.

If you are stating a fresh character, one of the things you may want to consider is the base appearance of each race and bloodline. If you are not into roleplay, this will be probably be your primary reason for choosing a bloodline. I would highly recommend doing a practice character first. Be prepared to spend an hour or more in the character creator to make the most of your character. If you have a lot of characters to update with the new patch, it is probably good idea to get comfortable and put some music on before you get started.

For your convenience, here are pictures of all the base characters you can work with:

Male base

Female base

Choice of Gender: There are 3 types of people when it comes to this; Those who create a character that represents their self (1st person), those who create a character who they wish they could be (1st person), and those who create a character they want to control (3rd person). In Eve you will find that you will probably end up having more than one character. If you are one of the first two types, you will have a "main" and "alts". If you are the third type, you will probably have a lot of "mains". Something you will find come up is that some of the first type people become very offended when they encounter the other two types, expecting that they have also represented themselves in their character. The second type may mislead people to think they are the first type. The third type may also mislead people to think they are the first type, and will probably try to egg you on to talk dirty to them so they can entertain a room full of people or are running fraps for some youtube laughs.

Forward Note: Once you have picked a blood line, you move into the 'sculpting' phase. There are two main phases you work with and can move back and fourth between; the sculpting phase and the posing phase. The key thing to know going into this is the sculpting stage changes the character in the posing stage. The posing stage does not affect the sculpting stage. If you notice something wrong with your character while in the posing mode, its best to bounce back to the sculpt mode and fix it. Anyway, moving on...

For this example I am using an Achura female.

Sculpt Mode: First things first, we have a modest woman here so lets throw any ole clothes on. Then the next thing to do is to get a little familiar with the camera movement. Once you play around with that for a minute, take a good look at these controls and what they do:

Here are the different control surfaces you can use to sculpt. Notice that the controls do different things when the camera is face on with your character, and when the camera is looking at the side.

Now you really have to imagine your character in a totally straight faced position while sculpting. Save the death stare and flirty market winky face for the posing stage. What I am doing this time around is recreating my original character. The original profile pics left a lot to the imagination, so recreating them is really not that hard because of the awesome job the CCP artists did at making the base mesh reflect the original people.

This is where you make specific changes to the features, like a big nose and ears that stick way out. If you are trying to match your old picture closely, it is a good idea to have your old picture saved and open somewhere you can reference it. Even though the second round of character creation is my favorite, we will try to remake the original best I can this time around.

When attempting to recreate your original picture, you really have to focus on the bone structure. Pay attention to the brow, cheek bones, bridge of the nose, width of the nose, if the tip of the nose points up or down, the lips and the jaw bone.

For my character, I pulled the brow out and up a little. I lowered the cheekbones slightly and made them stick out a tiny bit more. I pulled the bridge of the nose way in and made the bridge narrower while making the bottom of the nose wider and then pointed it up instead of down. Then i added a little volume to the lips and pulled the chin out a tiny bit.

I quickly went through the body and made some minor tweeks, gave her bigger theighs, a little bump in the trunk and reduced the chest size. If the system that is currently in place makes it into launch there will be a lot of redonkulus boobs flopping around Incarna like a flag for those who have never touched a pair.

The completion is pretty simple and straight forward. My original character was very pale with perfect skin. You might want to make yours look old or add freckles or add scarring. Lets get the eyes and the eyebrow shape locked in real quick before we do the hair.

Hair: The hair for my character is far too easy, black hair pulled straight back. So for the sake of demonstration I will use a mohawk died brown. You can think of the color (primary color) as the real hair that grows from the roots. You can think of the secondary color as hair dye. The facial hair (only eyebrows for the ladies) slider bar is black when all the way to the left and can be shifted into the primary hair color when shifted to the right.

Eye color, Hair color, Makeup, Clothing and Background:
To be totally safe you can go with no color (just blacks) or one color. To really make your character pop out, you will probably find yourself using more than one color, so here is a quick lesson on how you can do that "correctly".

Shortest Lesson In Color Theory Ever:

Clothing: I want to create a character that would be unapproachable in Incarna. Being that this is a "woman" in video game land, someone will likely try to hit on her anyway. Doing the best we can here, nothing says "stay away" like all black matched up with a scowling face. I think this character looks like she isn't out looking for new friends to start a cupcake baking club with. This is what I'm after so lets move on.

Posing: I have the most fun posing the characters. Keep in mind you have to put your character through dozens of bad poses to get to a good pose. Posing is where your character develops an attitude and starts to come to life. You can take a character that has been laid out to this point as being unapproachable and make them look kind, angry, sad, proud or any other emotion.

The facial features are the obvious give away on the attitude. The less subtle features are the tilt of the head, the camera angle to the face, the head's orientation to the body, and the height of the shoulders. Make sure you play with all those controls to get the right feel you are after.

Picture Time: Something you will notice is that your character is alive, because of this you need to approach this somewhat like a photographer. Your character will blink or look away when you are taking the picture, so keep taking the picture till it is correct. You will bounce between posing your character and taking picutres quite a lot.

When taking the picutre be aware of the rule of thirds and how the camera in Eve actually frames up. The area the background image takes up is where the camera frames:

Once you have a picture in a pose that you like, create a new pose and take another picture in one of the other frames available. When you are done, choose the picture you like the most out of the saved pictures, make sure the picture you like the most is highlighted and move on to complete your character.

Below you can see the difference between not trying (shaded out) and trying (v4) to copy your original character.

So if you keep going back and fourth between your original character and the new character creator, you should be able to come up with something quite similar to your original character. If you end up with something you like, do it again with your real character and you should be happy with the character that you are stuck with forever.